Birds Do It, Bees Do It
by MelissaeWrites
Summary: Jack has a lot to learn about spring, and even more about its holidays. Admittedly, though, it'd be a lot easier to figure out if Aster weren't avoiding him. (Jackrabbit, Jack/Aster)


A/N: Hello all! It's been a long time, hasn't it? It's been a long winter full of a lot of injury, illness, and personal tragedy, but spring is coming! Hopefully it will bring with it new happinesses. :)

This fic was posted about a week ago during Lupercalia. It does contain people talking about mpreg, but none occurs in the story. If this squicks you, I suggest you read something else. The title is from the song "Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love)".

* * *

For as long as Jack had been a spirit, bound to acknowledge (if not always respect) the holidays that governed their world, Valentine's Day had been low on the list of celebrations that personally impacted his life. Generally he just left Eros a card with the most insipid flying baby that he could find printed on it and nicked candy from young lovebirds more interested in each other than the spoils of the holiday.

This year, though, this year was a little different. For the first time ever, Jack Frost was in a relationship of his own. (And oh, how Eros had laughed. Revenge was sweet when you were a spirit old enough to wait for it.) Truthfully, Jack wasn't entirely sure how spirits were supposed to celebrate the holiday with one another. He didn't think that giving Aster flowers or chocolates would go over well; he was better at both of those things than Jack would ever be. Winter spirits were not known for their romance.

Still, he was pretty sure that what they were doing now, this awkward dance of keep away, wasn't the way to do it. Aster had definitely been avoiding him recently. He was prone to fits of passion, both of them were, but their fights fizzled out quickly nowadays. Maybe that was unavoidable once you'd saved each other's lives a few times. So this, this quiet distance was worrying him. Aster never seemed to be around anymore, and when he did manage to track him down, he was... standoffish. Jack wasn't sure they'd been less than two feet apart in weeks.

Now, for instance. Jack was sitting on a particularly grassy knoll in Aster's warren, watching him tend to his eggplants. Aster had been as pleased to see him as he ever was, but there was a stillness to him as he worked, a wariness that Aster hadn't held around him in years.

"Aster," he called, and was gratified to see the way that Aster's ears immediately perked up. "Can you come here for second?"

And just like that, Aster was tense again. "Don't think so, mate. I've got my hands full over here with the eggplants," he said, and there was a hoarseness to his voice that Jack didn't like.

"Then maybe I could help you out with them?" Jack said, drifting to his feet and hopping down to where Aster's garden lay.

"No!" Aster said, and then, just as quickly, "Who knows what a ball of frost like you might do to these?"

It was a familiar taunt, and not a serious one, but one small detail hadn't escaped Jack's notice. Aster had backed away from him—and from the plants. Not once had Aster ever stepped away from his precious eggs instead of in front of them, not after that incident with the flurries a few years back. Jack swallowed around the lump that had suddenly manifested itself in his throat. He'd had enough of this. He'd put up with this for too long, telling himself that Aster always got a little restless before Easter, that he was probably just stressed. But it was Valentine's Day and his mate didn't want to be anywhere near him. Jack had taken a lot of knocks in his life, to his heart just as much as his body, but this... this was something new.

"Aster, what are we doing?" he asked, and it came out with more acid than he'd anticipated.

Aster's ears went back and he nearly dropped the old paisley trowel clutched in his paws. "What do you mean?"

Jack made a rough noise in the back of his throat. "I mean—" He took a step forward, and Aster immediately took a step back. "I mean that! You're acting like I'm diseased or something!"

Aster swallowed. "Jack, love, it's not like that—"

"You haven't let me kiss you in almost two weeks!" Jack snapped. And it was true, though he hadn't quite let himself think of it in those terms. They hadn't slept together, not like old times, not all tangled together and breathing each other's air. They hadn't held hands, or jostled close as they walked through the warren, or wrestled until they were both so close that they couldn't stand it anymore. And Jack acted like those things didn't matter to him, like they were too sappy to love, but he _did_. He loved them almost as much as he loved Aster himself, and now that he was used to having them, he didn't know how he could ever go back to the way things had been before. But... maybe he would have to.

"You... You're not tired of m—" He cut himself off before he could finish that sentence. That last word would hurt too much. "You're not tired of this, are you?" he amended.

"What? No!" At that, Aster really did drop his trowel. It lay there forgotten as he took a step towards Jack, and it stayed there even as he caught himself, paw outstretched, and forced himself backward.

The motion was not lost on Jack. "Then what?" he asked, voice tight.

Aster watched him, tense as any rabbit caught in a trap, before he sighed and shook his head. "Should've known you'd notice," he muttered.

Jack made a thoroughly unimpressed noise. "Anyone would've noticed. You aren't exactly subtle, Aster."

Aster gave him a sour look, but there was defeat in it as well. "It's not you, you know," he said.

"Really, Aster? That's what you're going with?" Jack asked, raising his eyebrows. "It's not you, it's me?"

Aster snorted. "Hardly. It's not you or me. It's this holiday."

Well. That wasn't what he'd expected. "What do you mean?" Jack asked, and he stepped just a bit closer.

Aster stepped just a bit further away, and almost stepped right off the edge of the hill. "Bloody..." He glanced down at his footing before glaring at Jack. "Stop that!" he said waspishly.

"Stop what?" Jack asked, and he was only partly trying to be annoying. "What have you got against Valentine's Day, anyway? Bitter because someone else is moving in on the chocolate market?"

Aster blinked at him. "What? Valentine's Day?"

Jack blinked back. "Okay, wait." He tapped his fingers where they lay against his staff in thought, and didn't stop even when Aster grimaced in annoyance. "I think we may be talking about two different things here."

"Aren't we always?"

Jack didn't dignify that with an answer. "Aster, why won't you let me anywhere near you?"

Aster fidgeted where he stood, and if Jack hadn't known better, he might have said that Aster was blushing. He definitely would have flown closer to get a better look at the soft skin hidden under even softer fur if that wasn't likely to end poorly for both of them. "It's. I mean. It's Lupercalia, Jack," Aster said, wringing his paws in a way that Jack mostly likely would have found a lot more endearing if it hadn't been paired with such annoying behavior.

Jack blew out a breath. Great. Yet another weird spirit thing that no one had ever bothered to teach him. "Okay. What's Lupercalia?"

"What— _what's Lupercalia?_ " Aster asked, and yes, there was definitely something Jack wasn't being told, because he hadn't heard Aster sound that offended since the time North had compared Easter unfavorably to Groundhog Day.

Jack just put on his best unimpressed look. He'd found it was the best way to deflate Aster's umbrage. Aster's ire was nothing without an audience.

From the look on Aster's face, he knew it. "It's my holiday," he finally said, voice just about as petulant as Jack had expected.

"Seriously, Aster?" Jack asked, and he gestured expansively to the warren in which they stood, from the eggplants to the river of dye. "Did you hit your head or something?"

Aster crossed his arms. He was definitely pouting. "My other holiday."

"Wh—they put you in charge of two holidays?" Jack asked.

Aster raised his eyebrows. "You don't understand how holidays work, do you?" He shook his head with something that Jack assumed was mostly affection. Mostly. "Dill."

"Well, I've never exactly had to deal with one," Jack said, untrue as it was. He'd had to deal with a great many Easters at this point, not to mention a few disastrous Christmases.

"No one just puts us in charge of them. We just sort of... I dunno, we get associated with them. I've been associated with a lot of things over the years. It happens when you've been around longer than a few centuries."

Jack knew that it wasn't an intentional slight, but he couldn't help the flush that graced his skin. "You're associated with Easter."

"I'm associated with Hope, Jack," Aster corrected. "And Spring. New Life. There are a lot of festivals in the spring that celebrate new life."

"Like Lupercalia, I'm assuming."

"Got it in one," Aster said.

"But what does that have to do with..." Jack made a helpless sort of gesture towards them, and the distance that separated them.

"Well..." Again, Aster looked fascinatingly uncomfortable. "Easter is all about new beginnings. Lupercalia is a little more on the, er, the new life side of things."

One second, two. And then the penny dropped. "Oh my god, it's a fertility festival, isn't it?" Jack asked. Would it be terrible to start laughing at his mate in a situation like this?

Probably.

Jack laughed anyway.

"Oi, stop that! It's a very important celebration!" Aster said, and his fur was all stood on end, just the way Jack liked it.

"So," Jack said, wiping a stray tear from his eye, "So if this is a—"

"A fertility festival."

"—an orgy—"

"A _fertility festival._ "

"Whatever. Doesn't that mean that we should be touching a lot more?" Jack asked.

"Not unless you're prepared to deal with the consequences," Aster muttered, looking away.

"Consequences?"

Aster rolled his eyes. "Jack, humans root during Lupercalia because they want to conceive, not because it's fun."

He paused.

"Well, not just because it's fun."

Jack coughed and tried very much to ignore the heat in his cheeks. "So? I'm not exactly at risk of conceiving, Aster. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not a woman. Or a pooka, for that matter."

To Jack's great relief, Aster just made a face at him. It was an old worry, but one that neither of them had quite gotten over. Thankfully, though, new annoyances seemed to be stronger than old pains. "I've noticed that," he replied tartly.

"So why can't we, y'know, root? It's your holiday, after all."

"It's my holiday," Aster said, stressing every syllable, "Because I'm associated with helping along new life, even in places it shouldn't take root."

Jack thought about the things he'd seen, the fine, trembling buds of new growth sprouted up in scorched places, dead places, places that should never have seen another new life grow. "So that—that applies to babies, too?" he asked.

"Yes," Aster said. "Er—" He paused, and his tail quivered with discomfort. "It's said that a blessing on Lupercalia can help even those who are barren conceive."

Jack swallowed. " _How_ barren?"

"I've never exactly had to test it, Jack!" Aster snapped. And well, there it was. Jack wasn't the only one sailing uncharted waters here. From what he'd been able to gather from bits and pieces of stories and offhand comments and nights when they curled into each other's space and talked until dawn, Aster hadn't exactly had many long-term relationships. It was only the hope that filled his core that had stopped him from giving up on ever finding someone to share his life with.

Jack had to admit that he was grateful for that. Still, he wasn't sure he felt the same way about this new ability. "So what you're saying..."

Aster's ears twitched, and he visibly braced himself.

"Is that if we touch too much now, you could accidentally knock me up?"

"Jack..."

"Put a bun in my oven?"

"Jack."

"Fertilize my—you know, I don't even know if I want to go with a garden joke or an egg joke here."

" _Jack._ "

"Yes, Aster?" he asked sweetly.

"Yes. Just—to all that. You might get pregnant, and wouldn't that be a disaster."

Well. "Excuse me?" Jack said, and while the hurt in his voice was mostly a put-on, he was uncomfortably aware that some of the sting was real.

"Er." From the suddenly hunted look on Aster's face, he'd cottoned onto that, too.

Jack had no interest in getting pregnant—he might have loved children, but that didn't mean he wanted one _inside_ him—but he'd thought they were past this, this idea that he might be a danger to the children they were sworn to protect. "I wouldn't hurt them," he said, and he was aiming for angry, or maybe stubborn. Unfortunately, it just seemed to come out petulant and a little hurt.

"No, Jack—" Aster did something complicated with his hands then, like he wanted to reach out but knew better than to try it. "Sweetheart, you know that's not what I meant."

Jack crossed his arms around his middle and tried not to glare. "What did you mean?"

"I know the children love you, Jack. We all know that. You've got the fiercest little band of protectors I've ever seen."

All the fight went out of Jack, then, leaving a sort of hollowness that he hadn't felt in a long time. "Then... what?" he asked. Even if he had no plans to become a parent, that didn't mean it felt good to have his mate declare him unqualified.

"It would _change_ you, Jack," Aster said helplessly, and his paws worried at each other in a way that made Jack want to gentle them. "And that's the last thing I want."

Jack bit his lower lip. Was it really? It seemed to him that Aster had always wanted to change quite a bit about him. He was always too loud, too cold, too spontaneous, too reckless, too _human_...

"I don't know what might happen to you if I touched you the way I want to right now. At full strength, my powers could do anything to a body full of so much magic," he said, and for someone bragging about his magical ability, he sounded awfully miserable. "I could hurt you."

And what could be more painful than that to a Guardian? There was nothing worse than inadvertently harming the people they wanted to protect. It went against their very nature.

Jack looked at Aster then, really looked at him. He took in the droop of his tail, and the forlorn look at the back of his eyes. Maybe Aster wasn't the only one who should have been worried about hurting someone. He had old hurts, wounds just as tender as Jack's, and this—how could this not be one of them? "Aster..."

"I didn't mean I don't trust you, Jack. You have to know that," Aster said, and his tone was imploring in a way that made Jack feel, to the very bone, like dirt. "I love you."

Jack swallowed hard. No matter how many times he heard that, it still made his throat close up. "I know... I know. I'm sorry. I love you, too," he said. He gave Aster a weak smile. "I was only playing at first, anyway. I don't think I was cut out for carrying babies. I just don't have the hips for it, y'know?"

That startled a laugh out of Aster, and Jack's heart rose to hear it. "Not yet, you don't. Give it a few Lupercalias, though, if you've got your heart set on them."

Jack shook his head and leaned on his staff, and he ignored the way his heart twinged when he said, "Jeez, can you even imagine it? Us? Parents?"

But maybe Aster had caught it anyway, because the look he gave Jack was surprisingly serious. "Yeah."

Jack looked away. "Well, that isn't happening anytime soon."

"Who said anything about soon?" Aster asked, giving an easy shrug. "I want you all to myself for now."

Jack told himself that he wasn't blushing. He'd always been pretty good at lying to himself. "For now?"

Aster smiled at him, and it seemed real for the first time in weeks. "I'm just saying I can see it. Not now, not soon, maybe not ever. Heaven knows we have enough rug rats to keep us busy. But... I can see it."

Jack thought back to that one Easter, years ago, and the way a tall, fierce warrior took a little girl's hand and showed her that magic really did exist. He remembered the way his own heart had melted just a bit at her smile. Maybe he could see it, too. Just a little.

He felt the tenseness in his shoulders begin to fade, and he wondered when it had started up in the first place. Was it when he'd thought Aster thought him unfit? Was it the beginning of this whole uncomfortable conversation? Was it weeks ago, when Jack first noticed that Aster was pulling away from him bit by bit?

He said the only think he could think to, and probably what he should have said at the very beginning. "I miss you."

Aster nodded. "Me too, surprised as I am to say it," he said, and his lopsided grin was still a little hesitant, as if he wasn't sure if that was okay to joke about again. Then, "I wish I could hold you."

Jack blew out a breath, and it came out shakier than he was expecting. "It's okay. We have time."


End file.
